Profile Essay

08/31/06

Write a profile about an everyday, yet unsung hero, one of those average people who do good things for others and make a difference in the world.  You might want to write about someone who works in a soup kitchen, someone who rescues stray animals, someone who tutors inner city children, or someone who builds houses for the homeless. Certainly this god-awful hurricane should give you plenty of subjects to write about.  Just take yourself down to the PMAC, the Maddox Field House, or the Ag. Center and volunteer yourself. This will give you an excellent opportunity to meet many everyday heroes. While you may creative in your selection a person to profile, the subject of your essay must meet the following criteria.

• The person you profile must be someone that you know, or can meet, and can interview personally (you can't just read about someone you've never met and base your essay on that individual).
• The subject of your profile should be an unsung hero. That means s/he cannot be someone who has already received attention from the media or awards for his/her good deeds.
• Your essay must not only describe the good deeds that this individual does, but explain how this person make a difference in the world, even if it's a small difference.
• Your essay should give the reader a sense that these good deeds aren't something that can only be accomplished by saints, but rather, something that each of us could do if we so choose. You can accomplish this last objective by perhaps explaining how this person is able to fit good deeds into his/her busy daily schedule, or by showing how these good deeds are relatively simple, yet they can make a big difference.
• Your essay should also describe the limitations of what this person can do. Remember, your essay is not a hagiography. No no one is a saint, or can save the world single-handedly. Thus, you must also explain what the subject of your essay is unable to accomplish because of his/her limitations.
• Your essay cannot be about you. One of the points of this assignment is for you to interview someone else, to perhaps even make the acquaintance of someone new.

In addition to the criteria above, your essay should also describe the subject of your profile in such a way that readers feel they know this individual and have a vivid picture of him or her in their heads. To that end, you might want to use the guidelines for observing a person found on p. 135 of your textbook.

And here are some other things to keep in mind when writing about the person you're profiling (taken from Shannon McGuire's Independent Study Guide for Advanced Composition):

• When choosing your subject, bear in mind that the eccentric, the erratic, the beloved, the dashing, and so on are obvious choices. But don't overlook
  the person who may seem ordinary on the surface but who is quietly remarkable in some ways.
• Use straight description sparingly. You don't want the effect of simply cataloging the things about the person that meet the eye. What you're after
  when you use description is the sense that outward appearance reveals or belie inward traits. For instance, habitual tossing of a head of long,
  luxurious hair or fingernail tapping may be worth mentioning as significant indicators of character.
• In the descriptions you do use, try to appeal to different senses, if possible.
• Use narrative liberally. Through narration, the individual may be shown in action. And as a part of telling the story of some of his or her
  experiences, it will be perfectly natural to have him or her speak in his or her own voice, through dialogue. You'll have "instant concreteness" and the
  most lively and convincing form of evidence for the dominant impression you are trying to create. Dialogue contributes to the narrative illusion of
  reality, and matters like a person's vocabulary and his grammar can be revealing.
• Choose for narration several small incidents rather than one long one. A personality is more completely revealed through various isolated events than
  by behavior on one occasion.
• Although you will want to create a dominant impression about the individual, don't feel obliged to simplify his character. If your sense of
  the person you're sketching is that he or she is complex, unfathomable or even paradoxical, that is a legitimate dominant impression to create in your
  sketch.
• Consider using the opinions of others in your sketch. The reaction of a person's children to his or her homecoming or of his or her employees to his
  arrival at work can tell us a lot about him or her.
• Keep in mind the DOMINANT IMPRESSION you are trying to create. Let your guiding principle to which details and examples you ought to include be the
  quality or qualities of character which you feel are essential.
• Careful control of tone is very important in creating an effective character sketch. Consider early on in the writing process whether you want
  to write from a middle distance to your subject, from "up close," or with detachment. In the final stages of revision, be alert to the subtleties of
  word choice which largely create tone.
• Avoid the temptation to moralize tediously about the character's vices and virtues and to over-sentimentalize, especially with beloved characters.